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High-temperature plumbing and advanced reactors
The use of nuclear fission power and its role in impacting climate change is hotly debated. Fission advocates argue that short-term solutions would involve the rapid deployment of Gen III+ nuclear reactors, like Vogtle-3 and -4, while long-term climate change impact would rely on the creation and implementation of Gen IV reactors, “inherently safe” reactors that use passive laws of physics and chemistry rather than active controls such as valves and pumps to operate safely. While Gen IV reactors vary in many ways, one thing unites nearly all of them: the use of exotic, high-temperature coolants. These fluids, like molten salts and liquid metals, can enable reactor engineers to design much safer nuclear reactors—ultimately because the boiling point of each fluid is extremely high. Fluids that remain liquid over large temperature ranges can provide good heat transfer through many demanding conditions, all with minimal pressurization. Although the most apparent use for these fluids is advanced fission power, they have the potential to be applied to other power generation sources such as fusion, thermal storage, solar, or high-temperature process heat.1–3
C. Christopher Klepper, Taner Uckan, Peter K. Mioduszewski, Robert T. McGrath, P. Hertout
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 14 | Number 2 | September 1988 | Pages 288-298
Technical Paper | Plasma Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST88-A20262
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Design of edge components for a plasma device requires a description of heat and particle flows at the edge of the device. In a tokamak, the ripple of the toroidal field affects the direction of such flows by affecting the direction of the field. In Tore Supra, in particular, the ripple is large (≤8% at the outboard edge). This causes a substantial (factor of ≤2) increase in heat flux deposited onto the limiter and antenna face. It also reduces the particle removal efficiency of the pump limiters by increasing the distance between the throat opening and the plasma edge. It is therefore important to include the ripple when designing plasma edge components such as pump limiters and radio-frequency antennas. A simple, but accurate, scheme for field line tracing is found and used to study this effect. Modeling of the ripple is discussed.
